Crazy Mountains
Plenty Coup, chief of the Crows, sought
visions from an early age. When he was ten,
he came to the Crazy Mountains with two
friends and climbed to a high lake at the base
of the highest peak, where the sun came
only a few hours each day, where trees fell
across each other and bleached white.
Peering between the trees he saw
the gray slab of the mountain rising sheer
from the blue lake to the lighter blue
of the sky. He had gone without food
or water for four days, until his tongue was
thick, but the spirits would not speak.
Placing his finger upon a log, he cut
through it, so was ever after shorter,
and when it would not bleed, he stabbed
it repeatedly into that same log
until it did. Finally voices did
speak from behind his head--saying:
where buffalo had been, the white man’s
spotted, waddling hapless beasts would graze,
and the young braves they called magpies
who had as boys been taught to toughen
themselves by swimming for sticks between
the chunks of ice in the Yellowstone,
would one day flounder in their classes
and go home to find their mothers distracted
by efforts to please that year’s father,
and that he,Plenty Coup, would see
all this in his lifetime and be able
to do nothing about it, except, against
his will, remember.